Mastercard to double India headcount to 4,000 in 5 years

Mastercard recently announced an investment of USD one billion over the next five years on increasing infrastructure.

Mastercard has already stared "on soil processing" in in its Pune facility during October last year.

Hyderabad: Global card payments major Mastercard which has announced an investment of USD one billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in India in the next five years, Thursday said it expectsthe existing headcount to double from 2,000 to 4,000 during that period in the country.

"In 2013, the total staff of Mastercard in India was 29 people. Today we are 2,000. All are highly technical qualified staff. This 2,000 represents 14 per cent of Mastercard's global strength. We continue to grow... I believe so," Rajeev Kumar senior vice-president-market development, South Asia for Mastercard said at a press conference here.

"It (headcount) would easily double in the next 5 years. If you had to take the last USD one billion investment (in India) for 2,000 people, we believe it (the fresh USD one billion investment) would easily add another 2,000 (employees)," he added.

Betting big on the growth of Indian digital payments market, Mastercard recently announced an investment of USD one billion over the next five years on increasing infrastructure.

The company has already invested USD one billion in the Indian market in the last five years.

Rajeev Kumar said one-third of the freshly announced investment will go into stepping up "on soil processing capabilities" at Pune.

As per recent RBI guidelines, data pertaining to Indians transacting in India should remain on Indian soil.

Mastercard has already stared "on soil processing" in in its Pune facility during October last year.

"This is the first time that we will be going out of USA for an on soil processing one. After USA this (India) will be the first time Mastercard is going to setup an on soil processing capabilityoutside USA with end-to-end capability," the official said.

He also said over Rs 2,000 crore (part of USD one billion fresh investment) will be spent on setting up "Services Hub" to add value added services such as identification, tokenisation, security and analytics support.

"This will be for India and most probably for the rest of the world. Approximately one-third of the investment (USD one billion) about USD 300 millionor about Rs 2,000 crore will go into soil processing and an equal sum will go into services hub," he explained.

Quoting market reports, Rajeev Kumar said the total digital payments market in India is likely to touch USD one trillion by 2023.

According to him, there were nearly 991 million cards in India including 46 million credit cards.